Monday, January 28, 2008

583. Shapechangers In Winter - Margaret Atwood

I.Through the slit of our open window, the windcomes in and flows around us, nothingnessin motion, like time. The power of what is not there.The snow empties itself down, a shadow turningto indigo, obliteratingeverything out there, roofs, cars, garbage cans,dead flowerstalks, dog turds, it doesn’t matter.You could read this as indifferenceon the part of the universe, or else a relentlessforgiveness: all of ourscratches and blots and mortalwounds and patched-up jobswiped clean in the snow’s huge erasure.

I feel it as a pressure,an added layer:above the white waterfall of snowthundering down; then attic, moth-balledsweaters, nomadic tents,the dried words of old letters;then stairs, then children, cats and radiators, peeling paint,us in our bed, the afterglowof a smoky fire, our one candle flickering;below us, the kitchen in the dark, the winkof pots on shelves; then books and tools, then cellarand furnace, graying dolls, a bicycle,the whole precarious geology of housecrisscrossed with hidden mousetrails,and under that a buried riverthat seeps up through the cementfloor every spring,and the tree roots snouting their slow wayinto the drains;under that, the bonesof our ancestors, or if not theirs, someone’s,mixed with a biomass of nematodes;under that, bedrock, then moltenstone and the earth’s fiery core;and sideways, out into the city, streetand corner store and malland underpass, then barns and ruined woodlands, continentand island, oceans, mistsof story driftingon the tide like seaweed, animalspecies crushed and blinking out,and births and illnesses, hatred and love infra-red, compassion fleshtone, prayer ultra-violet; then rumours, alternate wavesof sad peace and sad war,and then the air, and then the scintillating ions,and then the stars. That’s wherewe are.

2.Some centuries ago, when we lived at the edgeof the forest, on nights like thisyou would have put on your pelt of a bearand shambled off to prowl and hulkamong the trees, and be a silhouette of humanfears against the snowbank.I would have chosen fox;I liked the jokes,the doubling back on my tracks,and, let’s face it, the theft.Back then, I had many forms:the sliding in and outof my own slippery eelskin,and yours as well; we were each other’siridescent glove, the deft bodyall sleight-of-hand and illusion.Once we were lithe as pythons, quickand silvery as herring, and we still are, momentarily,except our knees hurt.Right now we’re content to huddleunder the shed feathers of duck and gooseas the wind pours like a riverwe swim in by keeping still,like trout in a current. Every cellin our bodies has renewed itselfso many times since then, there’snot much left, my love,of the originals. We’re footprintsbecoming limestone, or think of itas coal becoming diamond. Lessflexible, but more condensed;and no more scales or aliases,at least on the outside. Though we’ve accumulated,despite ourselves, other disguises:you as a rumpled elephant—hide suitcase with white fur,me as a bramble bush. Well, the hairwas always difficult. Then there’sthe eye problems: too close, too far, you’re a blur.I used to say I’d know you anywhere,but it’s getting harder.

3.This is the solstice, the still pointof the sun, its cusp and midnight,the year’s thresholdand unlocking, where the pastlets go of and becomes the future;the place of caught breath, the doorof a vanished house left ajar.

Taking hands like childrenlost in a six-dimensionalforest, we step across.The walls of the house fold themselves down,and the house turnsitself inside out, as a tulip doesin its last full-blown moment, and our candleflares up and goes out, and the only commonsense that remains to us is touch,

as it will be, later, some othercentury, when we will seem to each othereven less what we were.But that trick is just to hold onthrough all appearances; and so we do,and yes, I know it’s you;and that is what we will come to, sooneror later, when it’s even darkerthan It is now, when the snow is colder,when it’s darkest and coldestand candles are no longer any use to usand the visibility is zero: Yes.It’s still you. It’s still you.